CAMPS HOUSE VIETNAM'S ADDICTS

Drug Users, Prostitutes Forced Into Program Designed To Stem HIV Despite
High Relapse

BA VI, VIETNAM -- This is the second time Dang Thuy Quynh has been sent to
this government rehabilitation camp for prostitutes and drug users. This
time, she says she will ask to stay longer when her one-year term ends.

"I was a drug addict, and I'm afraid if I go back to the city it will be
very easy to become addicted again," the 20-year-old said.

The last time she was released, Ms. Dang had no job and went back to work
in a brothel, despite knowing she was infected with the AIDS virus. She
says she's happy now in Ba Vi, away from her former life in Hanoi, 65
kilometres away.

"I don't want to spread this disease to other people," she said.

But her chances of staying at the camp are slim because Vietnam's
government has decided to send each of the country's 130,000 known drug
addicts to mandatory rehabilitation programs over the next five years. That
will crowd the country's 51 existing camps and require large amounts of
money to build and run new centres.

Local officials have been given the power to send suspected prostitutes and
drug users to rehabilitation centres without any legal process.

The decision to impose compulsory treatment was made despite extremely high
relapse rates at Vietnam's current rehabilitation centres. Ninety-seven per
cent of addicts in Hanoi are back on drugs within five years of treatment,
officials say. High failure rates are common in other Asian countries as well.

The move signals that a fierce debate within the Communist government over
the way to battle AIDS and drug addiction has been won for now -- as in
several other Southeast Asian countries -- by those who favour a tough
stand against prostitution and drugs.

Experts had argued that harsh crackdowns drive drug use and prostitution
further underground, making it difficult to educate people at high risk for
AIDS and to conduct "harm-reduction" programs such as needle exchanges and
condom distribution.

That could threaten progress achieved in the region in recent years, United
Nations experts say.

" 'Social evils' is all the rage now in Southeast Asia," said Jamie Uhrig,
an AIDS consultant based in Vietnam. "The problem is, it doesn't work.
Imprisoning people with addictions or those involved in sex work does not
seem to help public health."

Vietnam's government has conducted well-publicized raids on discos and
karaoke bars suspected of allowing drug use and prostitution.

It also plans to send prostitutes' clients to "education courses" and
notify their families and bosses of their misdeeds. An estimated 70 per
cent of prostitutes' customers are government officials.

In Cambodia, where education and condom-promotion programs have sharply
reduced the region's highest HIV infection rate, Prime Minister Hun Sen
recently ordered the closing of all bars and nightclubs, saying they
encouraged violence and drug use.

In Thailand, which also brought down its HIV infection rate with AIDS
education and condom-distribution programs in brothels, the government has
reversed a permissive policy toward the sex industry and is shutting down
bars that stay open late or employ nude dancers.

Officials at the Ba Vi camp, which is treating 232 female prostitutes and
drug addicts, say simply penalizing drug use and prostitution is not
enough. They've watched the number of inmates testing positive for HIV
climb from just one in 1996 to 103 now.

The women's camp -- considerably less severe than a program for male
addicts at an adjacent walled-in part of what was once a state farm --
emphasizes detoxification, re-education, AIDS understanding and physical
labour. Women can choose from farming, sewing, incense making, silkworm
raising and hairdressing, with their income supplementing the centre's
meagre monthly budget of $27 per inmate.

"We are attempting to change their behaviour and attitude toward society to
make it more correct. Most do not have any job skills," said Nguyen Vi
Hung, director of Hanoi's Department for Social Evils Prevention.

"If they are not given any job training or treatment, they would be very
dangerous to society," he said.

Officials and others say most Vietnamese women in the sex industry are
forced into the work by poverty and lack of jobs.

Critics say the job skills taught at the camp are too low-paying and more
should be done to help women after they leave. They say scarce resources
should be used to support former inmates become AIDS educators among their
friends instead.

With a national budget of just $5.25-million a year for AIDS prevention,
the government has too little money to pay even $15 per month to released
inmates who want to become AIDS educators.

"I would like to be an AIDS communicator if I could be one, because it
would help me and help society," Ms. Dang said.

"I hope I can help others in the sex industry so they don't get this disease."